your breath is poison; your breath is wine
(you think your dreams are the same as mine)
She doesn’t believe him (of course she doesn’t), but that doesn’t stop her from giving him an encouraging smile, the curved lips softening the harshness of her alien features somewhat. She hoped that he was right; she hoped that one day a wayward magician would take pity on her plight and grant her more stability, but she knew that was a hollow wish—even for her. She came from a family of breakable things, and they had never once been given reprieve from what they were. Her mother, the water-bender, had been sick with love—obsessed with it. Her sister had been as breakable as she and as eager to break. Her father was a dying man with death rattling in his lungs and the promise of it on his infected kisses.
She came from a longline of the sick, the broken, the dying.
Adaline knew better than to think her future would be different.
Although, still, she caught herself dreaming (foolish girl). Still, she caught her heart racing in her fragile chest at the mere thought of flying or falling in love or having adventures that made life worth living. They were the most secret of hopes, the ones she was ashamed to admit even to herself, and she certainly was not willing to drag them to light in front of Ledger. So instead of admitting her heart’s desires, she gave a dreamy, hazy smile, her eyes blurred. “Perhaps…” her voice trails off, and she looks through the stallion before her to the horizon where starlight kissed the edges of the meadow.
His voice brings her back, and she frowns at his admission.
“It seems that we were of one mind then,” she says quietly, tilting her head so that her long, oddly translucent forelock fell away from her pink eyes. “I often come here for strolls. I find that they settle me.” She gives a delicate shrug. “I am not well-suited for things as permanent as homes.” What she does not admit is that she lives in the Falls with her brother and who she believes (fears) is his love. What she cannot admit, even to herself, is that she cannot live apart from her brother as equally as she cannot live near him and her.
What she cannot say is that she is as sick as her parents, as her siblings, and that her heart desires things that should not be her own. Instead, she gives a weak smile and mimics him by pawing gently at the ground, her delicate hoof scratching lightly at the grass and making little mark. She cannot help but feel like it is symbolic. That she was but a ghost in this land; that she, too, would not leave her mark. Here today, gone tomorrow, and no one the wiser.